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The Gospel According to Pinterest

The visual Pinterest has emerged as an unlikely fount of life lessons, inspirational homilies and high-minded quotations.

“KEEP Calm and Carry On?” Sorry, that was 2009.

Ever since the wartime British propaganda poster bearing those soothing words went viral a few years ago, ending up on iPhone cases and coffee mugs, design types have been searching for the next great hyperlinked homily.

Lately, the leading candidates are popping up in the most unlikely of places: Pinterest. The explosively popular image-sharing site has fallen under the spell of words — that is, quotes from the great minds that offer lessons to live by.

In addition to sumptuous pictures of platform pumps, chalkboard-painted refrigerators and salted caramel shortbread, Pinterest is now jammed with inspirational quotes, some of which could have been lifted from fortune cookies.

“Love All, Trust a Few, Do Wrong to No One” (by William Shakespeare), is making the rounds these days. So is: “I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious” (Albert Einstein).

Such pop-philosophy quotes, which seem to emanate from design-driven corners of the Web, serve as a form of group therapy on Pinterest. They have become so popular that a Quotes category was spun off in July, and now accounts for about 10 percent of Pinterest’s traffic, according to estimates by Repinly.com, an independent online directory that compiles data on Pinterest trends (Pinterest does not release such data).

Virtual verities, it seems, are as hot as ombré hair and fingernail art. It’s as if Hallmark greetings suddenly got hip.

“Inspirational quotes are wildly popular on Pinterest right now,” said Christine Martinez, 31, who runs a design blog, Miles to Style, in Oakland, Calif., and has 3.7 million followers on Pinterest. Repinly currently ranks her as the ninth most popular pinner on the site.

This summer, she pinned a quotation from Elizabeth Taylor (“Pour yourself a drink, put on some lipstick, and pull yourself together”) from a Tumblr called Sequins & Stripes. It was rendered on a poster-style graphic in cursive, and was “repinned” — that is, reposted by other users — 10,000 times, more than 20 times her typical street-style pin.

It is not a trend that Pinterest executives foresaw. “Pinterest is designed to be a visual experience,” said Barry Schnitt, a spokesman for the San Francisco-based company, adding, “We were surprised by the popularity of these quotes.”

Photo

Sarah Kieffer, a baker in Minneapolis who runs a blog called The Vanilla Bean Blog.Credit
Allen Brisson-Smith for The New York Times

This being Pinterest, these homilies were given graphic design makeovers, either on actual posters, greeting cards, T-shirts or often as JPEGs that show up first on Tumblr or other blogs. Then they get picked up and passed around on Pinterest, as well as on Twitter and Facebook.

Bonnie Tsang, 38, a photographer and blogger in Los Angeles who ranks as Pinterest power-user No. 4 with more than 5.6 million followers, sees heavy traffic with these dressed-up quotations. A recent repin showing a black-and-white photo from the early ’70s of John Lennon and Yoko Ono holding a white placard that reads “Don’t Hate What You Don’t Understand!” was then passed along more than 1,600 times.

“The ones that get many repins usually have to do with boosting our self-esteem and self-love,” Ms. Tsang said. Her favorites include “I Think I Like Who I Am Becoming,” which she herself turns to as a pick-me-up when things get tough.

For Sarah Kieffer, a baker in Minneapolis who runs a blog called The Vanilla Bean Blog, the quotes can be so moving that she sometimes prints and tapes them to her bathroom mirror and refrigerator. A recent favorite was uttered by Hazrat Inayat Khan, the Sufi teacher: “Some people look for a beautiful place, others make a place beautiful.”

“I know Pinterest is seen by many as a big time-waster,” said Ms. Kieffer, 35. “But I’ve found it to be a great place to find inspiration that goes beyond pretty pictures and beautiful homes.”

One problem with Pinterest is that every fresh idea spreads so quickly that it soon becomes its own cliché (think French braids, Nutella brownies). Even within the emergent micro-genre of the Pinterest quotation, some messages have already become so overused, they produce eye rolls.

Lately, for example, there are endless variations on “YOLO” (“You Only Live Once”), said Kate Arends, 28, a graphic designer in Minneapolis who runs a blog called Wit & Delight. The Steve Jobs quotation “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish” lost its power, she said, when it started to pop up on seemingly every Pinterest board.

Arguably, none of this might have happened without the popularity of the “Keep Calm and Carry On” poster. Commissioned by the British government in 1939 to ease fears of a possible German invasion, it enjoyed an unlikely renaissance seven decades later as an objet in design blogs and Domino magazine. That poster showed that a simple, uplifting edict packaged in the form of visual art could hit the sweet spot for urban creatives who desired a little pick-me-up, but were too cool to display self-help books on their Vitsoe shelves.

These philosophical nuggets on Pinterest serve a similar function, particularly for heavy users, who include many at-home types who could use the occasional pat on the back. “Because we work day jobs and a night job — blogging — these kick-in-the-pants quotes help keep each other motivated to keep working on what we love,” said Caitlin Flemming, 27, who runs a design blog called Sacramento Street in San Francisco.

Skeptics may scoff at searching for deeper life lessons among the hair-tutorial photos. But on Pinterest, the pretty graphics can function as the proverbial spoonful of sugar. Advice that might seem hectoring coming from a loved one, like Ms. Taylor’s credo, seems more palatable when rendered as wall decoration.

“It’s one thing for a family member to tell you to get yourself together,” Ms. Martinez said. “It’s quite another when a person you follow on Pinterest presents some sound advice with a great typeface on a pretty background.”

A version of this article appears in print on October 4, 2012, on page E8 of the New York edition with the headline: Shakespeare vs. Elizabeth Taylor. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe